Columbia man is charged in theft from lingerie store

A Columbia man was arrested Tuesday after a panty raid at a lingerie store in an Annapolis mall, Anne Arundel County police said.

Police said two Victoria's Secret employees at Westfield Shoppingtown Annapolis saw a man grabbing handfuls of underwear from the store's display tables about 5 p.m., stuffing 145 panties into an oversized shopping bag.

The two workers confronted the man, who struggled with them outside the storefront.

County police were called and arrested Ricardo Langford III, who was also carrying a hypodermic syringe and a plastic bottle cap with an unidentified substance in it, said police spokesman Lt. Joseph E. Jordan.

Langford, 35, was charged with felony theft, two counts of assault and possession of drug paraphernalia. He was being held in lieu of $20,000 bail at the Anne Arundel County Detention Center.

The underwear - worth more than $1,100 - was returned to the store, police said.

The arrest comes two months after four people stole about $3,000 worth of bras from the same Victoria's Secret store. The thieves in the June 25 incident were not apprehended, and police believe the cases are unrelated, Jordan said.

Jordan said he didn't know what the man intended to do with the stolen underwear in the most recent case but said he may have wanted to resell them.